Vouchers end game is the destruction of public education

From Scathing Purple Musings by Bob Sykes

From Palm Beach Post writer Frank Cerabino:

And by the time the program seeps into the middle class, it will be too late to stop.

Florida’s expansion of public funding of private schools will have a significant “domino effect,” said Andrew Coulson, the director of the Cato Institute’s Center of Educational Freedom.

“If you have 300,000 kids in a single state in private schools, thanks to a school-choice program, you’re eventually going to have everybody in that state in a school-choice program, because the parents who aren’t eligible for it will demand the ability to participate,” Coulson said at the symposium.

And then you’ll have your tax dollars going to a largely unregulated gaggle of private schools that lack the teacher certification and student testing requirements of public schools. A playground for shortcuts and profiteering.

Behold the zombie.

It’s going to take a lot more than a temporary setback to kill this beast.

The subtle admission by senate president Don Gaetz that he was open to different tests for vouchers schools further advances the suspicion that the agenda of the state’s republican legislators has always been to destroy public schools. Gaetz clever rhetoric gave the impression that he wanted the same accountability standards for voucher schools when he really didn’t.

How dirty are republican legislators willing to be? Cerabino reminds readers about the troubling realities of Step Up for Students, the administrative agent of the voucher program. More revelations are  sure to emerge as more people take a closer look at their financials.

Republicans don’t care just how smarmy Step Up for Students may turn out to be as the means justifies the ends. Any means, no matter how corrupt, are acceptable in their zeal to end public education.

http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/florida-voucher-bill-like-a-zombie-that-wont-die/